Now that you are about to become a close ally of the US and a dictator at the
same time, you should be warned that this might not be the beginning of a long-living
love affair that inevitably ends with an account full of dollars, an army equipped
with the finest stuff ever produced to kill your enemies, with the warm feeling
of security because your American advisers taught your people how to get rid
of your opponents, and with standing ovations at the UN Security Council for
whatever you will say against Russians and other foes.

This is a little history lesson to remind you that the weather in Washington
is much more capricious than the continental climate of Eurasia.

The US certainly won Cold War, but not necessarily their Allies. One of the
first to experience that fine difference was Saddam Hussein, Washington’s close
ally in the Middle East for much of the 1980s. Hussein was a CIA asset to overthrow
the Qassim-Regime, which was for the Americans too close to Soviet Union. In
1963, he successfully organized a coup and rewarded his American supporters
by killing hundreds of Iraqi communists and with oilfields for American companies.
But only in 1979, after another coup in Iraq and one in Iran, Hussein became
chosen by the US as " our bad guy" in the region. When the Mullahs
in Iran blow away the Shah, he became a useful idiot to take revenge for one
of the biggest failures of American policy in the Cold War. Whatever he wished
from the US to wage a war against Iran, he got it. Americans can be very generously,
no question about it. They even provided him with chemical weapons to kill whoever
he liked to kill.

However, it took not a long time after the Soviet Union collapsed, that the
Americans changed their attitude towards Saddam Hussein. For their new grand
gamble to rebuilt the Middle East, he was now more useful as an enemy than as
an ally. Hussein was trapped to invade Kuwait to provide a pretext for the First
Gulf War, followed by years of the sanctions, the no-fly-zone, and it ended
with another gulf war, and a hole as the last refuge for Saddam and a not so
nice execution in the dark of the night.

Lesson learned? You can kill as much as enemies of the US as possible, you
can sell your natural resources, but it will not shield you, when the storm
from Washington takes another direction.

Do you remember Mobuto Sese Seko, the long-standing ally of Americans in the
heart of Africa? You should, Ukrainian peacekeepers went there to tame the chaos
that was left by his downfall in 1997. With the help of the CIA, Mobuto took
over the Congo by a coup d’etat in 1965, and since then he was their most willing
ally in Africa. He was their man to deliver weapons for the UNITA in the Angolan
civil war and for the RENAMO in Mozambique, and of course, he was to ensure
the unhindered plunder of the Congo by American companies, most notably the
plutonium for American atom bombs. But then in the 1990s, Americans lost their
interest in Africa, and Mobuto with all his eccentricities, his corruption and
incompetence became a burden for President Clinton, who was propagating a new
world order free from such oriental despots. If Mobuto had lived long enough
to read the leaked telegrams of the US Embassy in Kinshasa, he would have learned
that despite all the services he did for the US, he wasn’t in such high regard
by his American allies.

Lesson learned? You can shake as many hands of American presidents and politicians
as you want, you will never know what they really think of you.

Not scared enough, because you think these are fancy tales from the old times
of the Cold War? How about Noriega, trained by the CIA to control the Panama
and to help them with their war against the drug cartels in the 1980s. But then,
in the wake of the Contra-Iran scandal of 1986, his involvements in drug smuggling
became somehow a nuisance for the dirty warriors of the US. In order to get
rid of him, the US invaded Panama at the end of 1989 and arrested him after
they treated him with noisy rock music for days to force his surrender. He was
sentenced to 40 years in prison, released after 17 years only the take another
round in a French prison.

Lesson learned? American pop culture is not only for entertainment it can be
a weapon, too. You may have buried your not so humble origins in war of oligarchs
in the 1990s, but there is certainly some file at Langley waiting to be opened
if it suits somebody.

There are so many other dictators who tried to strike a deal with the US only
to end up in prison or on a graveyard. What about Colonel Muammar al-Ghadafi?
Okay, he was an arch enemy of the US for most of his life. But when he tried
to change the sides and supported the American war on terror by offering the
services of his torture experts to hunt Al-Qaeda, he was not awarded with American
friendship but with bombs that drove him out of his palace and an assassination
squad that killed him. Assad of Syria, who tried to buy time by offering similar
services, barely missed that fate, but only with the help of Putin. Russians,
it seems, are more loyal to their "bad guys". Think about Castro!
Who was freed from his debt burden by the Russians last year. Do you hope the
IMF will be that generous? Or the Chinese, after all the years, they still stick
to Mugabe even if Xi Jinping is miles away from Zhuo Enlai, who laid the foundations
of this special relationship in the 1960s. I guess, they even still sing together
revolutionary songs behind closed doors, after some drinks.

Lesson learned? The University of Kiev, where you made your degree, is, after
all, not Ivy League and that is all what counts. As a former apparatchik you
will never know if your conversion to a democrat and capitalist is taken seriously
by your American allies. You will be under suspicion as all the other converted
ex-terrorists, ex-Marxists, ex-dictators, who bow to the American flag.

American politics, you should know, are a snake pit. There are so many agencies,
institutions, lobby groups involved that you will never know who is in charge
of foreign policy. There are dozens of think tanks that, in order to be heard
in this choir of voices, come up with a constant stream of new strategies, priorities
and emerging conflicts to be made relevant to the US. The president, despite
all the glamor and pithiness surrounding his office, is only a moderator between
all these different factions and voices. The American empire is overstretched,
there are so many conflicts to be manipulated, so many interests to be served
that you can never be sure what is your actual ranking on the priority list.
After all, the only thing what counts are domestic politics, the polls and the
contributions for the re-election campaigns. In this murky world of an empire
that regards itself as chosen by god and as indispensable, you are what you
are: an outsider, an useful idiot in your best days, a burden when the US changes
its priorities or loses its interest for you.

I hope you will sleep well.

Michael Pesek is a lecturer in global history at the Humboldt-University
of Berlin for many years. He has been published in major German and French newspapers.

Once I read the word "dictator", I just switched off. Since Proroshenko will never read it, I just wonder who the author is trying to bamboozle. I visit these websites only because they're a good bellweather of what's scaring the neocons this week. Clearly, they fear the developing alliance between the US, NATO and Ukraine, which is no more that the logical and foreseeable consequence of Putin's misconduct. By the way, since Mr Pesek seems to be a specialist in colonialism, he might grace us with an article on Russian colonialism at some future date.

Michael Pesek

I hope so, I am working on an article on post-colonial ukraine. But I will have some research on this. To the question of Poroshenko's dictatorship: This is quite obvious, that there a strong tendencies towards dictatorship in today's Ukraine. Dozens of activists and journos are arrested, forced mobilisations, and laws that curb free speech.

Anna

When one reads the words "I just switched off" in your comment, one can switch off immediately. Michael Pesek being a professional historian has a lot to say. And who are you?

Poroshenko eventually will be removed by Right Sector or Svoboda when their CIA masters tell them to make their move.

Michael Pesek

That is a possible scenario. Poroshenko, however, garantuees the access to external ressources of money, weapons, and so on. The important question is whether other players like the Right Sector acknowledge this role or nor. If the US for instance sticks to Poroshenko, he may remain in power, just for this reason. If the US sends some signals that Poroshenko is dispensable, he will go…

Michael Pesek

maybe I can send you my next article to have a look on it.

Otto

"maybe I can send you my next article to have a look on it."
Well, I would say put it HERE, so that Mr. Itzig Kenny gets a nice heartstroke ;-)

Minnesota Mary

Would someone please clean up the grammatical errors in this piece? I had to quit reading after the first few paragraphs.

John V. Walsh

Come now, MN Mary.
The author is German and his English is better than my German, and yours too, I will wager.
It is not hard to read through the errors. Try again. This piece is well worth the effort.
Nicely done, Michael.

Minnesota Mary

Sorry! You are right. My apology to Mr.Pesek. I was rude.

Of course I agree with what he is saying.

Michael Pesek

This ok for me. Of course English is not my first language, but it is the best way to get a message heard by many people. Most people in the world who are speaking or writing English are not native speakers. That is the price of a global language. This is not an excuse. However, I am open for any criticism and help to improve my work.

Anna

This is a top argument of americans obsessed by their imperial ego, when they have nothing to say. Read in German.

Otto

Dear Mary, look at the content, this is a BLOG with people from all the Planet. And EMGLISH is by accident the spoken-language. You & your yanks don't even speak ENGLISH, you need a dictionary to understand wat an Englishman has to say :-D. So be so kind to continue spitting your tobacco in the can and cleaning your Colt.

Don't play the intellectual chick here, you voted a Dubya-Jr at your time. And this TWICE! And we, the rest of the World .. misunderestimated the brain-damaged cowboy ;-) That times are gone, Hoch-Englisch oder nicht! ;-)

Alex

This letter adress to Yatseniuk too.That are 2 dictators.

Otto

"That are 2 dictators."
Yeap! Two Israelis, puppets of that Neocon- doughnut /donut for Mary from here, upstairs ;-)/ Victoria, the main-architect of Nulandistan.